AND THEIR CULTUEE. 17 



April, which is the flowering season of this species, is frequently very warm, 

 and the earth from the rocky nature of the soil retains considerable heat. 

 At this season refreshing showers are usually frequent. The plants are 

 always, as a rule, found growing upon the slopes, and I might say never 

 in flat ground ; the surface soil to a depth of from 2 to 3 inches is a rich, 

 vegetable mould, composed of decayed leaves and grasses, acting like a 

 top dressing ; beneath this is a bed of small broken fragments of lime- 

 stone, through which the flower stalk descends to the bulb, which is found 

 in what may be termed a fine limestone sand ; this becomes, from the bulb 

 upwards to the surface, coarser and coarser, the bulb lying at various 

 depths, sometimes near the surface and sometimes 4 to 5 inches deep. 

 From the slope of the hill side and the porous nature of the soil, the 

 drainage is perfect, but the sand is by no means so dry as to be devoid of 

 moisture. I perceive that Professor M. Leitchlin is inclined to cavil at 

 my saying these bulbs do not thrive well in earth, although, at the same 

 time, he proves me to be correct by showing that his bulbs so treated are 

 annually exhausted by rotting away and leaving only a number of small 

 bulblets in their place. Now I did not mean to assert that this bulb can 

 never be reared in earth, because I have myself sometimes succeeded in 

 doing so, but then the soil was carefully kept from too much moisture. 



" I can but record what I see to be the mode of treatment to which 

 nature resorts, and I do not seek to improve upon or teach her. 



" The natural soil is a fine, highly porous, limestone gravel, becoming a, 

 limestone sand as it descends ; it is often hundreds of feet deep and beneath 

 it usually runs a belt of greenstone, by which, when the hills were- 

 upraised, the limestone was crushed into fragments of every size, and in. 

 some places, instead of the limestone, we encounter our out-crop of green- 

 stone or a deep bed of finely comminuted Lydian stone. 



" Nature then points out that the proper soil for this species is a porous 

 limestone gravel, with a top dressing of fine rich vegetable mould ; but if, 

 disregarding her instructions, we plant the bulb in a rich earth and on a 

 flat surface, the moisture being greater than the plant requires, the bulb 

 rots away and expands its strength in flowers and bulblets. 



"This year I planted several roots of full size in good earth, and nearly 

 the whole rotted away leaving plenty of offspring, but the flowers were 

 poor ; others planted in poor stony soil and sheltered, gave good flowers 

 and all remained sound. Now they are all in limestone sand and for the 

 future will remain so. In this soil they remain exposed to the full force of 

 the wet Monsoon from the beginning of June to the end of September, 

 and although the rain sometimes descends for a week together, in a. 

 perfect deluge, such is the porous nature of the soil, that the Lilies smile- 

 and thrive uninjured. When once they are found to thrive in their own 

 soil let them alone, for I hold that the system of digging them up every 

 year to be both injurious and puerile ; they will stand any amount of cold, 

 and are sometimes covered for a month or more with two feet of snow. 



" Whom does nature employ to dig them up at stated seasons ? Left in 

 their natural soil and, if possible, on a slope among long coarse grass and 

 dwarf shrubs, the bulbs, far from rotting, will annually increase in size 

 until full grown, throwing off numerous bulblets, while the flowers produce 

 an abundance of seed." 



